Kids eh? Look at kids with their attitude, hair, clothes and phones. Acting all clever because they all get hundreds of GCSE’s and you left school with two and one of those was a just scraped through pottery and textiles. They must have made the exams easier you say to try and justify your superiority over kids. So up you swagger to one of the kids and ask him what he’s studying then if he’s so clever. Maths huh? And then you remember that you can’t remember any of the “harder” maths they taught you at your school. You were too busy staring at that girl you fancied but would never look at you in a million years or out of the window as the rain lashed down on the hard grey concrete and yet you’d still sooner be out there than in that maths lesson. All the maths you know is a vague impression of the Pythagorean Theorem and how to work out the VAT on goods and that’s only because it’s changed to 20% and is much easier now.

You may be wondering where this diatribe is heading. There is a generation growing up who didn’t enter the initiation of making a C-90 mix tape for someone else. The careful selection of the cool track with the pumping beat, the funky bass line track and then that wild leap of faith into that catchy pop ditty to make them smile. You’d know when you got it wrong and could hang your head in shame and learn from your mistakes for the next one. Yes, this generation can burn CDs but music is much more widely available for a teenager of limited means and, the bottom line, it’s NOT THE SAME!

Which bring me to Dirty Water which is a C-90 mix tape complied by a cool uncle who got a job in the music industry and is tut-ed at by other members of the family at the Christmas meal. The cool uncle in this case is Kris Needs, author and editor of ZigZag magazine. Kris has put together a compilation that explores and offers that holy grail that many seek; where exactly did Punk come from?

Do these tracks show the originals of Punk attitude? You can hear a grain in some tracks, a rock or two in others and a bloody great boulder in the majority.

The usual suspects appear and are most welcome; MC5, The Stooges, New York Dolls and Dr. Feelgood. But Mr Needs reaches back even further and adds the tracks that, if not scream punk attitude, at least spill your pint in the pub and stare at you until you lower your eyes. Gene Vincent’s 'Bluejean Bop' is an odd example until you hear it played within the context of this compilation.

All in all an excellent buy. Yes, there are some tracks in there that may try your patience but, by and large, it is one of the great compilations to play out as the background to a walk in the park where you watch the kids fall off their skateboards and you shake your head and mutter under your breath.

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Dean Lester Smales